


Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter

by outlier



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Kink Meme, Not Canon Compliant, Shower Sex, tw: stitches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:27:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24616813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outlier/pseuds/outlier
Summary: Kara and Alex are on their way to Argo for a visit when something knocks their pod off course. They crash land on a terraformed ice planet, and have to figure out how to survive until rescue arrives.
Relationships: Alex Danvers/Kara Danvers
Comments: 28
Kudos: 234
Collections: The First Annual Femslash Kink Exchange 2020





	Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Val_Creative](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Val_Creative/gifts).



> Prompts I attempted to satisfy are in the endnotes.

_Spring_

Kara pulled out of sleep slowly, to the sound of something beeping frantically. Her alarm, maybe? From the bright light seeping through her eyelids, it was clear it was day already. Was she late? For what?

“ _Warning. Warning_.”

There was a harsh edge to the voice speaking her native tongue. It pulled at her, at her still sluggish mind. It was a voice from a nightmare, from night terrors that were and had been real – Krypton exploding at her back, her pod pulled into the grip of the phantom zone until she was mired in never-ending nothingness. Was that why she was so cold?

“ _Power reserves at ten percent_.”

There was a loud crack and a rumbling vibration. Kara blinked, cringing back against the blinding light that revealed, and into a solid form tucked behind her. It came to her suddenly, like a trap that’d been sprung. Just a quick trip to Argo to meet my Mom, she’d told Alex. We’ll sleep through most of it, she’d said. And Alex, always cautious because her mind mapped out the millions of ways in which any activity could go wrong, no matter how mundane, had nodded her head and followed Kara’s lead and climbed into the pod with her. They’d managed to make a space designed for one work for two. Kara had set their course, engaged the pod’s automated deep sleep function, and sent them hurtling through space.

Alex was here with her. _Alex_.

She sat up, heart racing. Lights were flashing in a discordant symphony, like a visual representation of her sudden panic. They were burning through atmosphere, blue-white heat friction splitting around the nose of the pod. She blinked, shook her head, and tried to clear away the lingering fogginess of deep sleep. The pod had always been a self-sufficient, automated craft, requiring little in the way of input from her. Calculate coordinates, enter them, and the pod would take care of the rest. In the face of system readouts, warnings, and countless displays with navigational readings, she was momentarily frozen.

They were going to crash.

 _Alex_.

It was growing hotter in the pod. It registered, finally, the heat, and the way it seemed to be cutting through the cold of space. The view was stable, not spinning, which meant the pod had at least managed to keep them out of a free fall. They were stable but off-kilter, and one of those flashing lights was trying to tell her that she needed to fix that, and soon, or else they were in danger of flying apart. Whatever had happened had damaged the pod’s ability to correct its trajectory, which meant she was going to have to do that. There were manual controls, she knew, but they had to be activated.

At her side, Alex began to stir. “What?”

She spared Alex a glance, just long enough to see the sleepy, confused look on her face. Her brow was furrowed, like she’d already sussed out that they were in desperate need of one of her contingency plans. If only, Kara thought, well aware that neither of them was prepared for this.

Manual controls. She had to activate the manual controls. There’d only been a little time before her mother had placed her in the pod. Not nearly enough time to go through an intensive training course in pod flight, though she’d had plenty of time to explore in her decades spent in the phantom zone. It came back to her in a rush, like the memory had been unlocked. A press of a button, the slide of her finger over a screen, and the mechanism released. Two levers, one to control vertical flaps that would adjust altitude and help control speed and one to control the vents that would open along the side, allowing her to reorient in three-dimensional space.

_Power reserves at eight percent._

The first thing she needed to do was to get their nose down. At least, that’s what she surmised from the heat building around them. The lever was stiff in her hands, resisting the grip she was trying to keep gentle so that she didn’t accidentally put them in a worse position, nose down. She flexed her fingers against the grip and pushed, one eye on the curve of terrain beneath them. She didn’t recognize the planet. It wasn’t Argo; of that, she was sure. A quick assessment revealed it as ice planet covered with biodomes dotting the surface, creating perfectly formed spheres covering land that was likely meticulously designed for the cultivation of crops.

With a creak of strained metal, the pod edged closer to true. The tinge of atmospheric heat splitting across the nose shifted, white heat mixed with more orange than blue, indicating less heat stress on the metal. The cacophony of warning klaxons lessened only slightly, just enough so that it was clear when Alex took in a sharp breath.

“Kara?”

“I’m handling it,” Kara said, watching the gauge she’d finally located, the one showing the pod in relationship to the horizon. She felt Alex tense, still, made into a statue beside her. Mind racing, Kara was sure, taking in information and formulating plans.

“You’re doing good,” Alex said, and Kara nearly laughed at the tenuous calm she’d forced into her voice.

“I had to switch to manual controls.” The nose of the pod was almost level now. Kara tried not to tremble, tried not to do anything that would alter their approach. “I don’t know where we are. We’re going to have to put down. Actually, that’s going to happen whether we want it to or not.”

Alex brushed against her side as she pushed up. Kara wanted to wrap around her, sure this was a nightmare she was going to put in her rearview mirror come daylight, but that wouldn’t help. The ground was approaching alarmingly quickly. This was a nightmare, but one she’d awoken to.

“Those domes are probably shielded.” Alex’s voice was tight but flat. In crisis mode, Kara surmised. If she had to be plummeting toward an unknown planet in a craft that was bleeding power and damaged in an unknown way, there was probably no one better to have at her side than Alex. “We can’t know whether or not we can penetrate the barrier, and we can’t chance it. See if you can place us on a course to land close to one of the domes. I’d rather not break into pieces against one.”

Alex apparently had a faith in her piloting skills that Kara did not. Still, having a plan, any plan, was better than blind panic.

“There,” Alex said. Kara followed the course set by Alex’s pointing finger to the down slope of a mountain at the edge of a mountain range. They were coming at it from an orientation that would let them follow its slope – assuming Kara could match it.

With a pop, they were in the planet’s lower atmosphere. Superheated metal creaked again, hitting a frigid temperature square in the face. Frost began to stretch across the glass encasing the pod’s cockpit, tracing out like spiderwebs in the process of being formed. Despite the change, it was clear that something was on fire in the forward mechanism, flames fanning out and leaving a thick trail of smoke to curve past the cockpit. With only seconds to position them before impact, Kara angled the nose of the pod down. A touch to the other lever and they were in a 30 degree bank to the right and closing the distance to their make-shift landing strip by the second.

“Brace, Alex. _Brace_.”

Kara curled around Alex, careful to keep herself from tensing so she didn’t turn herself into another hard barrier. The first, crushing impact sent them crashing into the side of the pod. Kara absorbed the blow, Alex held tightly against her. She wrapped her hand around the back of Alex’s neck, protecting that delicate breakpoint as best she could from the sudden, careening jolts. The sound was overwhelming, overheated metal grinding against rock and ice, the popping of untold components coming loose, and the groan of pieces of the pod being torn free. Kara’s shoulder put a hole in the padding lining the cockpit. She tried to avoid as much of the delicate machinery as she could, but a lever broke against her thigh as the pod skidded down the mountainside and tipped over onto its side with an ominous creak. She took as much of the impact as she could against her forearms, but Alex still hit the lip of the pod, where craft met glass, with a painful sounding thud.

By the time they stopped moving, Kara had hugged Alex to her so tightly that Alex had to push at her shoulders to get her to loosen her grip.

“Are you okay?” Kara asked, pulling back to see as much of Alex as she could. There was a line of blood running down from Alex’s nose – Kara vaguely remembered Alex yelping as Kara drew Alex’s head into her shoulder, desperate to keep one of the most fragile parts of Alex safe. Maybe she hadn’t done so with the gentle restraint she’d thought she had, but a quick glance with x-ray vision reassured her that Alex’s nose wasn’t broken. Without thinking, because Alex was safe, Alex was alive, Alex wasn’t so badly injured that Kara couldn’t save her, Kara kissed her. It was quick, over almost as soon as it began.

Alex was okay. Alex was alive.

_Power reserves at two percent._

“Can you get us out of here?” Alex asked, her voice hoarse.

Kara squirmed until she was able to find the release button that raised the pod’s canopy. With the pod half-buried in ice, it opened only far enough for them to be able to wiggle through. Outside, the temperature was dangerously cold for a human. Kara could tell, by the way Alex began to shiver almost immediately.

“Can you lift it?”

Alex was scanning the terrain. She wiped at the blood dripping from her nose, managing to smear it across her cheek. Kara wanted to tuck her into bed, to find a soft cloth and wet it and clean her wound. Instead, she worked her fingers under the edge of the pod and pulled, dragging it free of the trench it’d dug into the side of the mountain.

“We need…” Alex’s voice stuttered to a stop. There was an agonized frustration on her face, and this was all Kara’s fault. _Come with me to Argo_ , _Alex_ , she’d said. She’d done this. She’d dropped Alex into this foreign, icy world. “We can’t stay here. We don’t know anything about this planet. We don’t know who might have seen the crash, and who might be coming to investigate.”

Alex was already climbing back into the pod before Kara could stop her. There was a great deal of rattling around before she re-emerged, strapping a gun to her thigh. And of course she’d brought a gun.

“You take the pod,” Alex said, pinning Kara with a look that promised she was determined to fight and win any arguments. “Find some place to stash it, then come back for me.”

Something in Kara recoiled at the thought. “I’m not leaving you.”

“No, you’re not. I’ll be here, waiting on you.”

She wanted to shake Alex by her very brave shoulders. “Get in the pod, Alex. I can carry you and the pod.” Alex looked like she wanted to argue, but Kara could be stubborn too. She readied her own arguments, fully prepared to unleash them all in the middle of this frozen wasteland until Alex gave in.

With a grumble, Alex climbed back into the pod.

With the pod (and Alex) held above her head, she hovered in mid-air, scanning the surroundings. She wasn’t going to fly straight into one of the biodomes. They didn’t know what lurked there, and Alex had stressed that they needed to garner as little attention as possible until they were able to do a little reconnaissance. Everything else just seemed to be snow, ice, and more snow, though, and she was worried about the way Alex’s lips had started to tinge blue. They needed somewhere safe, somewhere sheltered, and, preferably, somewhere warm.

A few earth miles from the visible edge of the biodome, Kara found a cave with a mouth wide enough to accommodate the pod. She set the remains of it down as gently as she could, conscious of the way her breath fogged in the still cold air. She wasn’t always capable of detecting small changes in temperature, but it seemed warmer in the shelter of the cave, if only a little. At the very least, there was no frigid wind to seep into the folds and weave of Alex’s inadequate clothes.

“Help me out?” Alex asked. She’d pushed up on the pod’s canopy and was looking down at Kara with a tired smile on her face.

Kara pulled her down and into a tight hug. Lips pressed to Alex’s temple, she let herself be reassured by the solid weight of Alex’s body against her, the tickle of Alex’s hair against her cheek, and the familiar smell of her in her nose.

_Summer_

Every day, Kara crawled into the guts of the pod. She still didn’t know what had happened. Perhaps they’d been pulled off course by the unexpected gravitational pull of a passing asteroid or comet, or perhaps they’d wandered into a cloud of space debris. Whatever it had been, the pod had suffered nearly catastrophic damage. The comms array was dead and the power source rendered inoperable. They’d collected all the pieces that had scattered along the mountainside during the crash, but Kara lacked the tools to make the craft spaceworthy again. Not that she wasn’t going to try.

The only good thing was that Teklok, their new home for the foreseeable future, was awash with a constantly shifting mix of different species. From what Kara had gathered, picking through snippets of half-remembered languages, Teklok had been one of the early terraforming projects of a civilization apparently hellbent on establishing agricultural and technical primacy across as much of the known universe as possible. They’d been lucky to crash-land in a transition area, where, she learned, the barrier was permeable enough to allow for their craft to enter without shattering them or it to pieces. Had she gone for a more direct approach… Kara didn’t like to think about it.

Instead, she worked.

Kara had grown tired of quick baths of snow thawed with weak flickers of heat vision in a concave piece of scrap metal from the pod, the distance from the yellow sun sapping her of the powers she’d had on Earth. She’d grown tired of solitary work, too, and Alex’s absence during long days spent trying to piece together the pod’s innards with tools too primitive for the job. But, they had to eat. Alex had been insistent upon it, even more so than the constant, background ache of Kara’s unfilled stomach, so Kara couldn’t argue. It meant Kara was pulled from sleep with the dawn, when Alex slid free of the thick, parka-like garment they’d stolen from a ten foot tall alien too drunk to notice, whose hulking frame had meant it was just big enough to serve as a shared bedroll. Alex had to cross the 3 miles of snowplain in time to clock in for the job she’d managed to find, so each morning, Kara would watch as Alex grabbed a few spoonfuls of left-over nutrient paste, pressed a soft kiss to her forehead, and left her behind.

She didn’t begrudge Alex the work. From what they’d learned, most of the agri jobs had been automated, leaving the non-machine jobs few and far between. They’d considered having Kara try for a spot in maintenance, but Alex had argued that if Kara worked all day, she’d be too tired to spend time on the pod at night. Alex had won the argument, the way she seemed to win more arguments than not, and Kara had been forced to stay behind to watch Alex grow thinner and more haggard with each long day.

Alex had gotten a job sweeping up dust at the hullum processing plant, where they harvested every last bit of hullum fiber. It was too precious to waste, one of the universe’s most precious commodities. The fiber could be woven into anything – fabric, building materials, ship hulls – with a resulting tripling of strength. So Alex swept the floors and cleaned the machines and dumped everything she’d managed to collect into the main processor. Her worksuit was provided by the company and taken at the end of each day, stray hullum fibers collected in the washing of it. It was the reason for the company provided showers. Bits of hullum that caught on skin or in hair washed down the drain and through a microsieve to be collected for sale.

It meant that Alex came back to their cave every day smelling of soap, with little bits of it carefully preserved in a small metal box she’d salvaged from the wreckage. The bits would go to Kara, who lathered them into the strip of worn cloth they’d likewise salvaged, for her own unsatisfying bath.

“I’d like a shower,” she’d grumbled at least twice a week, as she sifted her fingers through Alex’s icy, damp hair as they lay huddled up against the cold in the makeshift sleeping bag, bare skin to bare skin to maximize body heat. As hard as she tried, she never felt clean enough. Not the way she had back on Earth, with what she remembered as an endless supply of hot water available at the turn of a tap.

“Okay,” Alex had said, on a night when Kara thought she was more likely to get snapped at for returning to the same tired lament than she was to be humored. Alex had looked strained for days, trying to hide a limp as if Kara didn’t see and know everything about her. “I think I have it figured out. I think I know how we can do it.”

Kara could have kissed her.

Alex had told her where to go and wait until she could be fetched, so Kara had hidden out behind uniform bales of tightly wrapped hullum and tried not to sneeze at the dust. As the biodome’s artificial lighting system had dimmed to something approaching Earth’s dusk, she’d seen Alex’s coworkers pass by on their ways home, uniform with their tired steps and wet hair. No Alex, until Alex appeared just where she’d said she would be.

“Hurry,” Alex said, scanning the environment with the hyperconsciousness of someone trained to expect threats from all corners.

Inside the large, spare building housing the showers, the long hall of stalls was empty, though Kara didn’t know how long that would last. Alex had told her how they worked in shifts, with no time in the day when there wasn’t something to be done. She’d seemed wary about the plan, even though it was her own; frightened, Kara knew, of losing this job and the few credits it earned.

Alex pulled two thin, threadbare towels from a stack and used her key card to open a locker. They stuffed their clothes inside, and even though there was less reason to be nervous naked, when Kara’s clothes couldn’t give her away as not of the company, there was still the sense that they were courting discovery and disaster. Alex was tense about the shoulders, on the kind of hair trigger that Kara associated with DEO missions against dangerous and unknown foes. If she’d had a gun, Kara knew it would have been drawn. She grabbed Alex’s hand when Alex made to move, and was grateful when Alex simply squeezed in response.

The keycard only gave Alex access to a single stall, and so they both crowded in. “We only get about 15 gallons,” Alex told her apologetically, turning on the tap. She had to reach past Kara to do it; with each turn, Kara felt Alex’s forearm brush against the underside of her breast. But Alex was businesslike about it, leaning into the not even lukewarm water of the shower’s weak spray just long enough to wet her hair. Her face was streaked with black hullum dust, like she was straight from a picture of the old coal miners back on Earth; as the water made tracks through it, cutting pathways and trails, Kara watched, entranced.

Alex nudged her under the spray, and Kara moved on autopilot, running her fingers through her hair to allow the water to penetrate down to her skull.

When she’d finished, Alex reached for the tap again, and the flow of water stopped. “It’s better to do it in stages.” Kara watched closely as she snagged one of the two small gel-like packets stacked on top of each other in a niche in the wall. “There’s just enough for one, but I think we can make it work,” Alex said, holding one out, apologetic again, like it was her fault. Like they were back on Earth, and Alex had forgotten to pick up a new bottle of shampoo at the store, even though it’d been on the list.

Kara shifted. Each move brought them together in a new way, knees bumping or hips poking into bellies or feet tangling. Alex laughed when Kara reached for the gel pack of shampoo at the same time as it was offered, the two of them nearly fumbling it in a desire to reach the same goal.

“It might be easier.” Alex held up a finger and spun it in a circle. “You’ve got so much hair.”

She did have so much hair. Too much, now that she had to deal with it without the luxury of hair products, hair dryers, and multiple brushes. It was an inconvenience she scraped up into a looped ponytail most days, but it was down for the shower, wet and clinging to the skin of her back. She nodded tentatively, and tried to turn without upsetting the balance between them, but it wasn’t the kind of thing that could be done. Her arm brushed against Alex’s breasts and the backs of her fingers bumped along the front of her thigh. Something in Kara wanted to do away with the pretense of separation. She wanted to wrap herself around Alex and let Alex’s strength convince her that they were going to make it out of this okay, but she always asked too much of Alex.

“Tilt your head back,” Alex said softly, and the tiled walls made her voice seem to echo.

Kara nearly jumped when Alex worked her fingers into her hair. Alex was thorough, the way she was in everything, combing through strands and working tangles free. When she moved to Kara’s hairline, she stepped forward. The cradle of her hips brushed against Kara’s buttocks, up and back as she stretched and moved. Her nails scraped against Kara’s scalp, behind her ears, and over the base of her neck, and Kara pressed back into the touch. She didn’t care that it meant Alex’s breasts were against her back. No, more than not caring, she wanted the touch.

She sighed when Alex’s hands disappeared. She would have returned the favor, but she could hear Alex scrubbing her own short hair with the left-over soap. Part of her was afraid that if she turned, Alex would have that expressionless look on her face, the one that hadn’t seemed to notice how close they were. The one that hadn’t lingered on Kara’s nakedness as they’d shoved their clothes into the locker, or snuck glances when they’d crowded into the shower.

“Water on,” Alex warned her, turning the squeaky tap again.

Kara let Alex go first, or that was her plan. She didn’t expect Alex’s arm around her waist, pulling her back into the spray. Pulling her back into Alex, their feet side by side and all of Alex pressed into all of her as Kara leaned her head back and Alex combed through her hair once again.

All too soon, the water was gone again. “Soap now,” Alex said, as if walking her through the steps, but this time her voice was different. Deeper, rougher, and when Alex reached out for the single gel-pack of soap, Kara put a hand on her wrist, stopping her.

She took the soap, familiar with it only in the scraps Alex had carefully saved for her. She’d never held it new, before the coating melted away under wet fingertips. When she turned, determined despite the free-falling feel of her stomach dropping, Alex’s eyes were soft. She looked at Kara like she needed to be reassured, like the reality of this strange world with its strange rules and strange dangers had finally hit her. Like maybe she wanted Kara to be the strong one for once.

Kara pressed the soap between her hands and felt it start to liquify. “Let me,” she said, useless words, because she’d already run her palm along Alex’s shoulder. There was a line of black where the neckline of her work suit had been, and Kara brushed her thumb over it. The black began to run, to disappear, and Kara chased it down, sliding her palm over Alex’s collarbone. She stopped when she reached the top of Alex’s breast and slid her hand to the side, careful to follow the curve of it until she’d reached all the way around to Alex’s spine.

Even without her powers, Kara could see Alex’s pulse beating wildly. “You always take care of me,” she said quietly, because the moment seemed to call for quiet.

She washed Alex as if she was an acolyte preparing her beloved, and for once, Alex let Kara take care of her. They were both a little thinner than they had been, always just a little bit hungry. It meant the muscles she’d watched Alex work for with single-minded determination back on Earth stood out a little more starkly. Kara ran her thumb down the cut of Alex’s tricep, over the sharp jut of her elbow, and down over the muscles of her forearm. She thought she heard Alex’s breath catch. Was sure she did when she cupped her hand around Alex’s wrist and traced her path back up Alex’s arm, over her shoulder, and further, to the back of her neck.

“Kara?”

“Let me,” Kara said again, at Alex’s other arm now. There was barely room to move as she continued her path, but she managed. She crouched, forehead pressed to Alex’s abdomen, as she took each of Alex’s feet in turn. The soap was already wearing thin as she cupped the backs of Alex’s thighs and followed them up. Alex must have scrimped to save the bits she’d brought back for Kara. Kara had known that, but to see it, to see the soap disappear in a thin film, was just another reminder of all the sacrifices Alex made for her.

Alex’s hand landed on her shoulder as she ran her palm along the inside of Alex’s thigh. The muscle there was as unforgiving as steel, pulled tight as Alex’s fingers dug into her. She heard a shaky breath from above her as her thumb stopped just short of brushing against Alex’s sex, and she missed her powers more than ever. If she’d had them, she wouldn’t have had to wonder how her touch might be affecting Alex. She’d be able to track her heartbeat and smell any arousal, but she’d burned out what little boost she’d had that day crawling around in the guts of the pod.

When she stood, she found herself so close that her breasts pressed against Alex’s. Her hands followed, one on each side of Alex’s abdomen in a steady trek up, soapy palms slick against Alex’s skin. She’d never really allowed herself to consider the weight of Alex’s breasts before that moment, but they seemed made to fit in her hands. Alex’s hands landed on her biceps and squeezed. Her eyes were a little wild and her lips were parted, but she couldn’t seem to find her voice.

“Alex…” Kara didn’t want to ask, too afraid the answer would be no. She cupped Alex’s face and ran her fingers over her brow, leaving behind hints of soap wherever she went. It was a faint milky taste against her lips when she lowered her chin just far enough to kiss Alex, who exhaled harshly against her as if she’d taken a hard blow to the gut. Alex’s fingers tightened on her biceps, hard enough to leave behind fingerprint bruises, but she didn’t pull away.

The kiss was a little shaky. It wasn’t a first kiss like the one Kara had imagined might happen between them, but she couldn’t have imagined anything like this in the first place. Alex was soap-slick against her, her lips trembling and her hands sliding around Kara’s back to dig in like Kara was the only thing holding her to the ground. When Alex pulled away with a gasp, Kara steeled herself for a refusal, for horror, for embarrassment. Instead, Alex just looked at her, eyes dark and soft in a way that had always made it hard for Kara to breathe.

“I can’t keep you safe here,” Alex said, and touched Kara in a way that mirrored how Kara had touched her. Kara shivered as Alex’s fingers brushed along her brow, her cheekbones, and the point of her chin. “I can’t protect you.”

They may have been trapped on a foreign world, the future uncertain, but Kara had never felt more hopeful. “Maybe we can protect each other.”

“I can’t lose you.”

“You won’t,” Kara vowed, patient as Alex’s fingers continued their downward trajectory, feather light as they skirted along the curve of her shoulder and down her arms until Alex twined their hands together, palm to palm.

Alex met her halfway for the second kiss. It had the edge of sharp teeth to it, as if Alex was trying to claw back all of the things Kara suspected she kept buried deeply inside. She knew Alex was scared. Terrified, if she was anything like Kara, who spent some days so laden with guilt over having torn Alex away from home and safety that she could barely move. She couldn’t have trapped Alex in a life like this, reduced to this, with precious little light on the horizon. Alex couldn’t move through the days like she didn’t blame Kara, like she was unable to stop taking care of her in ways big and small. Like she didn’t want to, even if she could.

When she pinned Alex’s hands behind her back, it was an accident. She’d been desperate to touch, and had forgotten that Alex’s fingers were twined around her own. But, Alex bucked against her when she did, hissing through her teeth and biting down on Kara’s bottom lip. Kara licked the spot reflexively, searching for a mark but finding soap bitter against her tongue instead. Blindly, she reached for the tap, driving them both back a step as she searched. As the water started to flow anemically, Kara froze. Somehow, in the stumble, her thigh had come to rest between Alex’s legs. With the few inches of height she had on Alex, it meant she was pressed tightly against Alex’s cunt. She’d never done anything like this before, never touched a woman intimately the way she was touching Alex, but she didn’t need to have done so to recognize what the slick heat against her thigh meant. When she drew in a breath in surprise, Alex looked up at her, guilt clear on her face, and opened her mouth to speak.

Kara could already hear the apology, as if there was anything wrong about this. She didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what the next steps would be in a seduction like this, but she knew she couldn’t let Alex say she was sorry, or worse, feel shame about this. So she kissed her, swallowing Alex’s fears along with her own; just like in everything else they did, where she led, Alex followed.

“What do you want?” she asked, when the water had slowed to a trickle and her lips were raw with the pleasure of kissing Alex. “What can I do for you?”

Her hands had found Alex’s ass on instinct, urging her forward even as Kara rocked her hips. Alex had gasped into her mouth the first time she’d done it, soft and surprised, and curled one hand into Kara’s hair. Not for the first time, Kara cursed her distance from the yellow sun. If she’d had her powers, if she didn’t have to hold on to every scrap of them, she could have lifted Alex effortlessly. She could have flown them to the sanctuary of their cave, wrapped them up in their makeshift sleeping bag, and made love to her the way she deserved. Instead, she nipped at Alex’s earlobe, pressed a trail of hot, open-mouthed kisses down the line of her neck, and dug her nails into Alex’s buttocks.

Instead of answering, Alex buried her face in Kara’s neck. She was breathing hard, each exhale hot against Kara’s wet skin. As much as she’d just been regretting her lack of powers, Kara wasn’t sure it would have been like this with them. She wasn’t sure she would have been able to feel the nuance of touch and pressure that was Alex’s hand wrapped tightly in her hair, or the drag of nails down her back as Alex’s other hand sought for purchase. The sensory input was almost too much – Alex’s muscles flexing beneath Kara’s hands as Alex thrust against her thigh, Alex’s nipples hard and pressing into Kara’s breasts, the tickle of Alex’s hair brushing against her shoulder, and the subtle flutter of her eyelashes against the side of Kara’s neck.

“Please, Alex,” she said, consumed by the need to give Alex pleasure, “tell me what you need.”

Alex pulled back to look at her, eyes dark and dazed. She blinked and looked a little confused, like Kara had asked her a question to which there was no answer. “Just you,” she said, her voice soft and rough, and Kara shuddered. She slid a hand down to hook under Alex’s thigh and pulled up. With the move, Alex was even more open for her, so slick against her, so hot, with her clit a teasing, elusive presence against Kara’s thigh. Alex leaned back so she was supported by the shower wall, and Kara followed her, kissing her hungrily. She’d wanted this for so long, sometimes overtly, sometimes sublimated under doubts and worries. Since coming to Earth, she’d built her home around Alex, so to have her like this too, with nothing between them and willing to put their want in the open, had her desperate to prove she was worth the risk.

When Alex came for her, it was with a look of wonderous surprise and the scratch of short nails over Kara’s shoulder and down, past her collarbone until Alex’s palm was flat against Kara’s stomach. With Alex’s head tilted back, Kara could watch the strain of tendons as Alex worked to stifle the sound of her pleasure. For a moment, Kara had forgotten their semi-public setting. She’d forgotten almost everything that wasn’t Alex, naked against her, holding onto her as if Kara was her anchor.

“I’ve got you,” Kara said, easing Alex’s leg back down to the floor and wrapping her up. She held on tightly while Alex shivered against her, until her breath came easily again and Alex could support more of her own weight. “Always.”

_Fall_

Kara shook her shoulders as Alex finished tying the knot securing the tee shirt wrapped around her face.

Behind her, Alex chuckled. “You ready, champ?” She gave Kara’s shoulders a slap, like a trainer sending a boxer in for a late-fight round.

She wouldn’t say she was ready, but Kara didn’t give it voice. They needed this, and Alex needed her to do her part. They’d been living in the tiny company-owned house for nearly two Earth-standard months, ever since the company had told Alex that she was going to need a registered residence to continue her employment. It had almost been a relief to move out of the cave, even if it was the by-product of being strong-armed into returning a portion of Alex’s earnings back to the company. The cave had become a prison, especially since Kara had finally given up on the idea that there was anything salvageable about the pod. No matter how many broken things she fused together with her increasingly capricious heat vision, they didn’t have access to the parts they needed to fix it.

They’d gathered their things and taken one of the indistinguishable houses. Kara had gotten a job at the company, joining Alex for day after day of herding stray dust and fibers. The plan had changed. There wasn’t going to be a triumphant launch putting Teklok in their rear view, but that didn’t mean they were beyond rescue. All they needed was access to a tightbeam to send an SOS to Argo, and Kara had every faith that her Mom would find a way to save her. She’d been counting the days since they’d crash landed, and Alex’s watch helped them figure out how the local day compared to an Earth standard day. Kara calculated the coordinates daily, using her best guess of where they were in the universe in relation to Earth and Argo to plot the relevant orbits. It was simple math for the girl who had been on track to be the youngest member of the science guild.

Simple math that didn’t matter if they didn’t have enough credits to purchase the tightbeam message. Most of Teklok ran on short-range. The wealthy had free access to tightbeam, but the general populace had to queue in line, money in hand, to pay the sole communications provider under the dome. Six more Earth standard months, and they would have managed to scrape together enough. Six more months of a life on hold, away from family, friends, and home. Then, Kara had seen it. It seemed like everything had happened for a reason when she did: the futility of her repair efforts, the tiny house with its barely double bed, the trek into and out of the hullum facility every day. If she hadn’t been there, hair wet from the daily shower that was probably the best part of the entire ordeal, she wouldn’t have seen the damaged ship sitting silently in the junkyard.

The junkyard was familiar. Back when Kara still had hope that there was something to be saved, they’d snuck into it looking for parts they could use to salvage the pod. They’d chosen it because it was what it was, a place for less than legal things to pass through. They were only taking things that had already been taken. It didn’t matter that it never felt quite right, because Kara wasn’t going to let a useless ethical quandary trap Alex on Teklok for the rest of her life. She’d scoped it out often enough to have the contents memorized, but the ship would have stood out regardless. The rest of the broken-down machinery was mostly agricultural, with a few ground vehicles and short-range craft mixed in, but the hulking black freighter was the kind to have, and need, long-range tightbeam capabilities.

When she’d pointed it out to Alex and whispered her plan, curled up behind her in their tiny, shared bed, Alex had breathed out slowly. Kara had waited for her to speak, tension rising in the ensuing silence, until Alex had turned into her, eyes flashing. “You’re sure you can do it?” she’d asked Kara, with something in her voice that had sounded like fear.

Kara had kissed her – forehead, nose, lips. “I’m sure.”

Now, Alex was in front of her, still as Kara secured a tee shirt around her face, returning the favor. “Run through the plan,” Alex said, the words muffled by her makeshift mask.

Kara huffed at her. They’d gone over the plan so many times even a goldfish could have memorized it. “We go in through the east side, at the spot in the fence where the power fluctuates. I wait for you to give me the okay before I ingress.” She couldn’t help smiling at the word, which Alex had used the first time she’d laid out the plan and which Kara had used every time since just to see the way Alex rolled her eyes at it. “Once we’re inside, you’ll scout the area around the freighter. When you say it’s clear, I board the freighter, power it up, and send the message. You’ll stand watch, and after it’s done, we leave the way we came in. Easy-peasy.”

“We don’t leave. We egress.”

It took a moment for Kara to process the joke, in that wry, dry tone of voice Alex used when she thought she was at her funniest. It wasn’t that Alex didn’t make jokes. It was just that she hadn’t really made them for a long time, since before they’d been forced to leave their cave and move into town. A joke meant hope, and faith that Kara could do this. Alex’s faith in her filled her. It made her light even as her throat tightened, because hope could mean disappointment.

“Right,” she said, the word a little choked. She wanted to kiss Alex. She wanted to be Supergirl again, and to take Alex into her arms and fly them away to someplace safe. “We egress.”

It was a good plan, a simple plan, and everything was going to plan until Kara felt a hand land on her shoulder followed by a growl in a language she didn’t understand but which nonetheless sounded very much like, “Gotcha.” Kara was hiding, like she was supposed to be hiding, while Alex scouted the area around the ship. They’d broken into this junkyard three times during their parts pilfering days, and there’d never been a guard. Alex had done reconnaissance every night for the week prior, and there’d been no hint of a guard. So why, Kara thought, panicked, was she being hauled to her feet and pushed out into the open?

Her first instinct was to call out for Alex, but she stopped herself. There were a number of reasons not to betray the presence of a partner, chief among them that Alex might be able to get away. Anyway, she could handle this. She was mostly without her powers, but she wasn’t helpless. Alex had taught her how to fight. All she needed was enough time and space to flee, so she spun around and squared up, righteous in her determination to handle this herself. It put her face to abdomen with a tall, whipcord lean alien who was, she discovered as she craned her neck back in search of their face, approximately half again as tall as she was. And grinning. And showing a lot of very, very sharp teeth.

The situation was, she decided, less than ideal. Still, she delivered a jab/cross combination to what seemed to be the alien’s midsection, her form perfect – just like Alex had taught her. A second later, she was laying on the ground, gasping for breath and clutching her chest, sure that the backhand she’d taken to it had left the imprint of the alien’s knuckles behind. She didn’t have time to catch her breath, though, because the alien was advancing quickly. Kara scrambled to her feet and looked around for something to help with the fight, since fists were clearly not going to be enough. The alien’s long reach was deceptive; she’d already taken a blow to the abdomen before she realized it was in reach. How much it hurt was a testament to the bare thread of the powers she had left to her on this planet, so far from the yellow sun. Not that the lack of them was an excuse, she told herself, squaring up once again.

It was as she was facing down the alien who had managed to take her down with infuriating ease that she saw Alex round the corner, assess the situation, and, like the popular kid come to defend Kara from the schoolyard bully, yell something in the local pidgin patois that sounded very much so like, “Hey! Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”

Kara would have laughed, if it wouldn’t have hurt so badly. Had she been the Kara who’d arrived on Earth, unaware of action movie clichés and painfully, exactingly pedantic, she would have felt the need to dissect the claim. For one thing, Alex was in no way of comparable size to the alien, who would have topped 8 feet if measured by the standards of Kara’s adoptive home. For another, even Kara was bigger than Alex, who she knew did not appreciate reminders about the fact.

Even though she wasn’t sure they shared a common language, some things appeared to be universal, taunts and challenges among them. Alex was already running full tilt at the alien even as the alien turned; she met them with enough force to send the pair skidding into the ground as Kara stepped out of the way, barely avoiding being part of the pile herself. Alex scrambled into a mount position before the alien could recover, looking ridiculously tiny atop her much larger foe.

Alex spared Kara a glance, already maneuvering to get one of the alien’s limbs in some kind of pressure lock from what Kara could tell. “Go,” she hissed, doing something complicated with the alien’s arm. “Send the message.” When Kara hesitated, because there was no way she was leaving Alex alone to deal with this herself, Alex’s expression turned grim. “Kara, go,” she urged. “Hurry.”

Alex had faith in her, she remembered. She’d told Alex she could do this, and Alex was making sure she had the time and opportunity. The door to the freighter’s cargo bay had suffered damage in whatever accident had brought it to Teklok, leaving her just enough room to squeeze through. It was a tight fit, the opening high enough off the ground that she landed awkwardly, palms pressed into rough grating. Shaking it off, she reached for the small flashlight that had been in the emergency kit they’d had on the pod. On, it did little more than provide a small circle of light, but it was enough for Kara to navigate through the mostly empty cargo area and into the crew quarters. The ship was compact, with shared sleeping spaces flanking a central corridor. It would have been more than enough to get her and Alex back on their way to Argo, provided it wasn’t beyond repair and provided they had the money to buy passage. Neither was true, but if Kara was right, that wouldn’t matter.

She nearly tripped over an abandoned storage container and crashed into the bulkhead shoulder first. The impact jarred the flashlight from her hand, and she lost precious time digging it out of the corridor grating. Every second she wasted was one that Alex spent fighting to keep her safe. Just the thought was almost enough to make her want to abandon the plan entirely, to rescue Alex, and to stay on Teklok forever, so long as Alex was safe. Maybe she would have, if she hadn’t seen the way Alex had looked at her with that little spark of hope in her eyes. Instead, she pushed forward, flashlight sweeping from side to side as she looked for the entry to the ship’s cockpit.

Nothing on the level she was on looked promising, but there was a ladder molded into a fore wall. She scrambled up it, sure it was made for something with smaller feet than hers, and emerged into a long, narrow cabin lined with glass on three sides. Toward the front of it, two chairs sat empty before an array of darkened controls. She wasn’t familiar with any of it, but there were guiding principles to these things, she knew. There were ways that were intuitive, even if there was variation across races. At least, she hoped so.

The pilot’s chair was covered in a worn, giving material that cradled her as she sat down to examine the controls more closely. The set-up seemed to be touch sensitive, at least by the absence of knobs and levers, so Kara tried to work through the puzzle. She laid her fingers against the main console just in case, but wasn’t surprised when nothing happened. The power up sequence could be embedded in the overall system guidance, but these sorts of things were built to avoid things like accidental shut-downs. It seemed more likely that the power-up and power-down controls were separate, tucked away somewhere where they would be unlikely to be bumped or activated by a stray touch. By the time she looked up and saw a thin strip that looked more functional than decorative, she’d touched almost every surface in front of her with increasing desperation.

When the strip lit up at her touch, Kara’s heart jumped. Lights began to flicker across it, no doubt offering start up options, but she didn’t know enough about the system to follow its guidance. There was no manual she could turn to for help, so Kara tried to remember everything she’d learned and observed as a girl on Krypton. On a hunch, she tried the most rapidly blinking of the lights, flicking her finger up along it as if she was turning on a light. A moment later, the craft gave a welcoming tone and the console in front of her blinked to life. Not sure if that was sufficient, she repeated the gesture with the remaining lights, and soon the engine had creaked into life with a pained noise that spoke of whatever damage it had incurred. It made the floor under her feet vibrate in a way that wasn’t entirely comforting, but she ignored it.

With a rush of relief, she realized that the console’s screen was filled with writing that was almost familiar. Her best guess was that it was one of the various forms of a universal basic, the default, she supposed, on a ship that had suffered catastrophic damage and been reset to the state it had been in prior to customization. It had been decades since she’d seen it, and Krypton’s rather isolationist stance hadn’t really encouraged the study of non-Krypton standard languages, but her Aunt Astra had insisted that a good soldier needed to be able to work with the tools they had, no matter where they were. Not that Kara had been planning to be a soldier, of course, but she’d idolized Astra. She’d taken her various pronouncements to heart, and had downloaded and studied a crystal on the predominant languages of the most populated systems.

Her hand was shaking as she worked her way through text that seemed to shift and transform in front of her. By her best guess, she accidentally activated voice commands through a control she was sure was going to take her to the communications access page instead, and had to back her way out of several menus that turned out to be similar dead ends. She cringed at a loud thump and a rattle as something slammed against the exterior of the ship. _Alex, Alex, Alex_ , called the primal part of her brain, but she consciously pushed it away. She would do this, like she’d said she could, and get Alex off of this wretched planet.

There was another thump, loud and ominous. She cursed in Kryptonian and slapped her palm against the arm of the pilot’s chair, because Alex was out there fighting for her life while Kara was wasting time trying to parse through a language she could only half read.

“New input detected,” the ship’s onboard vocal command system said in a stilted, robotic language that was almost, but not quite, Kryptonian. “Would you like to set Daxamian as the primary operating language for this vessel?”

Kara looked up at the ceiling, stunned. Daxamian and Kryptonian were very similar, though Daxamian had grown more unlike Kryptonian over time as Krypton continued to distance themselves from the splintered group of ex-Kryptonians who had founded Daxamian society. Still, they were similar enough, apparently, for the ship to recognize what she’d said and match it with the store of available languages in its operating system.

As she watched, the writing on the console screen changed, forming itself into bastardized versions of the alphabet of her youth. Her route through was quicker as she paged through menus and directories until she’d accessed the communications function. The coordinates were burned into her brain, and she pulled up a tightbeam packet, entered them as its destination location, and recorded her message. She did so quickly, laying out the essential basics. Their pod had crash landed on Teklok and could not be fixed. She gave her best guess at the planet’s coordinates and requested that the message be passed to her mother, Alura of the House of El. She set the array to transmit as broadly as it could manage, not trusting her own estimates to be accurate, looped the message to play on repeat in ten-minute intervals, and uploaded it to the tightbeam network.

She had already moved to shut the ship down again, the action instinctive, when she paused. It was quick work to navigate back to the communications portal again. She selected local communication and recorded another set of messages, this time in the local pidgin language. Then she retraced her steps as quickly as she could, squeezing back through the opening in the cargo bay door and tumbling out onto the ground outside just as the ship broadcast the first of the messages she’d recorded.

_“Self-destruct procedure initiated. This vessel will commence self-destruction in three minutes.”_

After a moment of silence, there was an outraged roar. Kara followed it to find Alex pinned against a ground transport vehicle with a piece of metal braced across her neck. Her face was bloody and her clothing torn, but Kara could see her fighting back, hands braced against the metal bar as she struggled to separate herself.

“Hey,” Kara called out in the local language, “I set your ship to blow up. You’ve got time to power it down if you hurry.”

She could see the indecision on the alien’s face. It was a mental calculation of ‘enough time to kill them and save the ship?’ that seemed to come down on the side of no, but just barely. The alien took a step back and shoved Alex into the transport. It gave Kara a look that promised retribution, then ran toward the ship. She watched just long enough to make sure the alien wasn’t going to circle back for an ambush, then rushed to Alex, wrapping an arm around her waist as Alex began to sag.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Kara said, wrapping Alex’s arm around her shoulders and taking as much of her weight as she could. “Can you walk?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Alex said, although she clearly was not. They stumbled through the junkyard to the sound of the ship declaring its two-minute warning, back to the spot in the fence that was glitchy enough to chance. This time, Kara tested it first, backing through as she pulled Alex along the ground. On the other side, she helped Alex to her feet again, shouldering as much of her weight as she could manage as she skirted back through the town, sticking to the shadows and moving carefully as Alex struggled to support herself. She ignored the way Alex’s breath was a little raspy and her feet unsteady – not because she wanted to, but because she had to. If she stopped to think about Alex hurt, and because of her, she’d get them caught.

“When’s the boom coming, Supergirl?” Alex’s arm was tight around her shoulder. It gave Kara the strength to push forward, knowing that Alex trusted her to keep her upright and get her to safety.

“No boom.”

“No boom?” Alex sounded disappointed.

“It was a recording. I made it up. I don’t even think freighters have things like self-destruct sequences.”

She warmed as Alex laughed, sounding pleased. “Such a smart girl I have.”

She warmed even more at that.

When she reached their little house, she didn’t bother hiding in the shadows. She wasn’t sure her neighbors would care what they did, so long as they didn’t make noise doing it. Alex would have cared, because Alex was nothing if not cautious, but Alex was hurt and Kara was tired of not knowing the extent of it.

“Sit,” Kara said, once the door was shut firmly behind them. She lowered Alex into one of the stiff chairs in the room that served as something like a kitchen. The light was best in there. She at least made sure the window coverings were down before she turned it on, which seemed like the kind of concession to safety that Alex would appreciate.

When she turned, Alex was looking at her expectantly, face alight with a bloody-toothed grin. “Did you send the message? Did it work?”

Despite everything, Kara couldn’t suppress a return grin. “It worked,” she said, breathless with the rush of it all. “I mean, I guess we won’t know for sure until someone comes for us, but I sent it.”

Now that she could see her in the stark light from the overhead light, Alex looked awful. Blood was streaked down her face from a cut on her temple. What wasn’t bloody was smeared with dirt and oil. Her shirt had been torn, and blood ran freely down her arm, but from what, Kara wasn’t sure. The elation of the moment before faded, and she sprang into action. They had a few rough cloths, some left over from their pod stash and some part of the kit they were given along with the house. She ran the tap until the water turned warm, filled a bowl with it, and soaked a cloth.

By the time she’d snagged a chair and settled into it, Alex had slumped back against her own, clearly exhausted. For a moment, Kara’s brain was static. She didn’t know where to start, wasn’t sure which of the blood-streaked bits of skin was the most emergent of the emergencies.

“The arm’s going to need sutures,” Alex said, as if she could sense Kara’s overwhelmed panic. As if the arm in question wasn’t her own.

Now that she had a place to focus, the need was clear. Kara took in the sluggishly bleeding cut running down from Alex’s shoulder and along her bicep and sighed. “Alex.”

Alex shifted uneasily on her chair, and looked uncomfortable with the attention, but she gritted her teeth and allowed the exploration, as infuriatingly stoic as ever.

“Let me see,” Kara said, reaching out with careful fingers to tug at the sleeve of Alex’s shirt. It was sliced open along the same path as the skin below, soaked with blood. She didn’t want to finish the process of its destruction – they didn’t have resources to spare for things like new clothes – but it was going to have to come off.

Kara reached for the safety scissors in their first aid kit and began to cut her way through to the neck of Alex’s tee shirt. “What happened?”

“Knife.”

She tried not to let the terror that gripped her show as she peeled away bloody fabric. “Is there… Are you…”

Alex seemed to take pity on her. “I don’t think there are any other cuts like that. Not that I can feel,” she said.

Their kit was rudimentary. There were painkillers, but they were no more effective than what could be bought over the counter. Regardless, when Kara dumped out the bloody water in her bowl and filled it with fresh, she brought back a glassful for Alex and urged her to take a double dose of them. Kara had never actually stitched anything before, not even a loose button, but she pulled out the sterile pack holding a needle and attached surgical thread. Just the sight of it made her nervous, so she turned back to Alex’s arm. There was only so long she could put it off, though, once the wound was as clean as she could get it and her hands were too.

“It’ll be okay,” Alex told her, likely sensing her nerves. “I’ll walk you through it.”

Kara wanted to laugh, as if it was as simple as that. Just one more thing for Alex to teach her.

“Grab the needle holder,” Alex said, gesturing to another of the tools in the first aid kit, the one that looked almost like a pair of pliers. Her voice was as calm as it had been when she’d taught Kara how to use the remote control for the television. “Use it to guide the needle through the flesh. Start about a centimeter away from the cut. Don’t go too far down, but you’ll need to get deep enough so that the stitches won’t tear out easily. Give it a little twist so it comes out on the other side, then pull until you have a couple of inches of thread left.”

She had to do it, Kara knew. There was no one else, and the cut was deep enough that leaving it as it was would be leaving Alex vulnerable to infection. Still, the hiss that Alex tried to smother as Kara slid the needle into her skin made her stomach churn. Despite the tug of flesh and muscle against the needle, it was still too easy. It reminded her of how vulnerable Alex was, with skin that would give way with no resistance for something so tiny.

“Good,” Alex told her, her voice strained, as Kara pulled the needle through and out. “You’re going to tie it three times, okay? You’re doing so well. Just wrap the thread around the nose a couple of times, grab the loose end, and pull it through. Good. You only need to loop it once for the next two, okay? Then cut it, move down a little, and do it again.”

Kara’s heart raced as she pulled the thread tight, bringing the two sides of Alex’s wound together. She wasn’t sure how Alex could sit so still, but then, Alex had always been her rock. The wound, when closed, cut across four inches of Alex’s bicep. The sixteen sutures were ugly against her skin, like a row of angry ants. Kara covered the wound with vaseline from a small container and wrapped it in gauze as carefully as she could. She cut Alex’s tee shirt down the side, which let her pull it off without having to make Alex raise her arm. The hem was clean enough, so Kara trimmed a few inches from the bottom of the shirt and used it to fashion a make-shift sling to help immobilize the arm. Only once it was wrapped and secured did she allow herself to start on the rest of Alex’s wounds.

“Is this okay?” she asked, dabbing at blood that had dried along a cut just above Alex’s eyebrow. Alex nodded, quiet, more docile than Kara was used to as she let herself be tended. She wiped away blood, oil, and dirt, until Alex’s face was clean. The cut above Alex’s eye was deep enough to cause concern. Kara rooted through the first aid kit and found a pair of butterfly bandages. She placed them with light fingers, dabbing at the fresh blood that oozed from the disturbed wound, then sat back with a sigh of relief.

Alex’s eye would be black, no doubt. It was already headed in that direction, and looked swollen and painful. She had a cut across the bridge of her nose and enough scratches down the other side of her face to make her look like she’d gone three rounds with a feral cat. There was an angry, dark red mark across her neck and upper chest where the alien had pinned her with the metal bar, and fist-sized bruises along the ribs on her left side. Kara slid out of her chair and onto the floor. She took Alex’s foot in her lap and unlaced her boots, tugging the laces wide so she could slide the boot off without aggravating any possible injuries underneath. When she had them off, she tugged away Alex’s socks and, with a tap to Alex’s thigh to urge her hips up, pulled her pants and underwear down and off.

Beneath her pants, Alex’s knees were abraded and bloody. Kara fetched clean water and repositioned herself on the floor in front of Alex to wipe away as much of the blood as she could without causing undue pain. There was a large, dark bruise on Alex’s hip, one spreading down her shin, and one on the top of her foot, as if it’d been stomped on. Unwilling to suppress the urge, she brought Alex’s foot to her mouth and placed a kiss against the wound, trailed kisses up along her shin, then leaned forward to do the same for the mark on her hip.

This time, she didn’t think the way Alex hissed had anything to do with pain.

“You’re always my protector, aren’t you?” Kara said, pressing her thumbs into the muscles of Alex’s thighs and sweeping upward, massaging away tension.

Alex reached out with her uninjured arm to brush Kara’s hair back away from her forehead. “I take care of you. It’s what I do.”

“I know.” Kara kissed the inside of Alex’s thigh, slowly and softly. “Nobody could do it better.”

Alex whimpered at the touch. “What are you doing?”

There were a lot of answers to that question, but Kara found she didn’t want to give them. “I think you were made for me, Alex,” she said instead, inching further up Alex’s thigh. “I think I was made for you. I think we were made for each other.”

This wasn’t new between them, not anymore. Not after that day in the shower, and all of the nights that had followed. Kara knew Alex now. She’d rooted out a panoply of ways she could make Alex cling to her, could make her gasp _please Kara_ , and could make Alex come for her. In return, she’d given Alex just as much of herself. Still, she felt a sense of wonder every time she earned Alex’s arousal. As close as she was, she could see it, the slight sheen that darkened the hair obscuring Alex’s labia. A kiss closer and she could smell how Alex was wet for her. She was conscious of Alex’s injuries, and almost moved to pull away, determined not to aggravate them no matter the need she felt to reconnect, when Alex’s fingers wound into her hair. Alex didn’t pull and she didn’t push. She held Kara like she needed the connection, and Kara leaned into it. She let herself be needed, contentment seeping through her like honey.

“Tell me if you need me to stop,” she said, surprised at the hoarse quality of her voice. Her knees were growing tender against the hard floor, but that didn’t matter. With a nudge, Alex’s legs opened for her, wide enough to fit over the breadth of her shoulders. She’d learned she liked the weight of them, and liked the way she could feel the flex of restless muscles as she worked between Alex’s legs. She liked the way Alex’s heels would dig into her back and the way Alex’s thighs would tighten against her ears as Kara brought her closer to orgasm. There were a lot of things she’d learned she liked, really, when Alex was on the other end of them.

She pressed a kiss to Alex’s mons, then gently pulled her hips forward toward the edge of the chair. In that position, Alex’s cunt lay open to her, and she traced the tip of her tongue along the seam of Alex’s labia. With each pass, she applied a little more pressure, so that Alex unfolded for her, unhurried. Above her, Alex drew in a deep breath. Her fingers tightened in Kara’s hair and her calves pressed against Kara’s shoulder blades. Conscious of the many ways in which Alex’s body was tender and sore, Kara worked her up slowly. This wasn’t about the wild rush of unrestrained passion. Alex was precious and she was hurt. She’d sacrificed herself (again) to keep Kara safe and to make sure their mission was successful, and Kara wanted to worship the well-honed tool that was Alex’s body the way it deserved.

“You take such good care of me,” she said, pulling away long enough to look up. Alex’s eyes were hooded and her lips parted. She took in a shaky breath at Kara’s words, and Kara grinned. She rested her head against Alex’s thigh and curled her arm around the other until her thumb was pressed against Alex’s clit, stroking lazily. “There’s no one I trust more. I don’t have to worry, not as long as I have you.”

She knew what the words of praise did to Alex, could feel it in the way Alex grew wetter beneath her touch. She knew she overshadowed Alex back on Earth, that everyone saw Supergirl and marveled at her strength without understanding that there was no Supergirl without Alex. Alex made her feel brave and confident and fearless, because she never had to doubt that Alex would be there if she faltered. Kara’s gifts came effortlessly, even if the trade-off for them had been the loss of her entire world. But Alex… Alex had worked so very hard for every one of the things she used to protect Kara.

And there was nothing better than seeing Alex melt for her.

“You taste so good,” she said, licking Alex’s arousal from the pad of her thumb. “Did you know that? I love the way you taste. When I see how wet you get for me, it makes me wet too. You know what you do to me, don’t you?”

She replaced her thumb with her mouth and sucked gently on Alex’s clit. Alex’s soft gasp and the way she shifted against Kara, like she was desperate to get closer, made the ache in Kara’s knees and the possibly bruised ribs she’d been ignoring worth it. Beneath the palm she’d laid flat against Alex’s abdomen, Alex trembled. With the message sent, it felt like they had time. The future wasn’t an unending grind any longer, not with hope on the horizon. Kara could take the time to savor. She could tease Alex’s opening with her tongue and map every contour of her cunt. She could work until her jaw ached, and Alex’s fingers were tight enough in her hair to sting.

Alex came with a breathy cry, the jerk of her hips grinding her into Kara’s face. Kara could feel the strength of it in the way Alex’s thighs trembled against her shoulders and in the way Alex’s heels dug into her back. It was a perfect moment, there in the tiny, spare kitchen on a foreign and hostile world, surrounded by Alex’s trust in her. As Alex relaxed against her, Kara licked her clean with gentle strokes of her tongue, because Alex was always sensitive after orgasm. She needed soft touches and time to recover, which meant Kara had time to snuggle in close and sink into the comfort of touch.

“Come on,” she said, standing slowly. She slipped an arm under Alex’s knees and another behind her shoulders and lifted her up. She missed her powers again, when this had been easy and there’d been no twinge of muscles in her back, but Alex’s surprised yelp more than made up for it. She laughed down at Alex’s affronted look as she covered the few, short steps between the kitchen and their bedroom. The small bed they shared was rumpled, rough sheets left unmade. Kara lowered Alex gently, careful of her arm, and stayed away from her only long enough to pull off her own clothes.

“You didn’t…”

Kara found it funny how Alex was still shy about some things.

“I don’t need to,” she said, and she meant it. It was enough, bringing Alex pleasure.

“But I want…” Alex’s head pressed into the thin pillow with a small huff of frustration.

She curled up at Alex’s side, taking in the silhouette of her profile. “What do you want?”

“I want to make you feel as good as you made me feel.”

She could have continued to push to see what she would have gotten in return, but there was something about the moment, hushed and on the tail-end of the night’s adrenalin high. Instead of trying to coax a blush from Alex, Kara pushed up and slid her knee over Alex’s thighs so that she was straddling her. When Alex reached for her instinctively, wincing as the move pulled at the sutures Kara had sewn into her skin, Kara put a hand on her wrist, pushing it down.

“I don’t want you to touch,” she said, sliding a hand between her legs. “I want you to watch.”

She was already slick, already close. She could still taste Alex on her tongue, and the way Alex’s eyes darkened and she hissed a strangled _fuck_ might have been enough on their own. Kara decided she could provide a show some other time, when Alex was strong enough to try and take over. When she could pin Alex back down on the bed without worrying about hurting her, and ride her thigh and bite bruises into her neck.

“What do you need from me?” Alex asked her.

Kara reached blindly for Alex’s hand, the one not held tightly against her chest by a sling. Alex’s grip was sure as Kara circled her clit. Her orgasm built quickly, like dry tinder at the touch of a match. She let Alex see all of it, kept their eyes locked for as long as she could manage, until she couldn’t anymore. Alex’s hand squeezed hers as she rocked against the air with the clench and release of climax. She braced herself against her other hand when she fell forward, careful to keep her weight off of Alex. She kissed Alex softly, and tried not to let the warm depth of Alex’s eyes coax her into more.

After, she settled down against Alex again, fingers still twined together, pressed close in their small double bed. She kissed her shoulder, snuggled in close, and fell asleep to the rhythmic rise and fall of Alex’s chest.

_Winter_

The last thing Alex had said to her before they’d dragged her away was, “I will come back to you. I promise you, Kara. I promise. I will come back.” And Kara, watching, stunned, couldn’t remember what she’d said in return. She couldn’t remember if she’d told Alex she loved her, if she’d vowed to come find her, or if she’d said nothing at all. The whole morning was a blur in her memory. She’d been surprised – they both had – by the knock on the door and the people on the other side of it, stern-faced and wearing uniforms, with stun weapons and handcuffs and the authority to bring them in. Normally they would have been on guard for something like this, or at least Alex would have been on guard, but their success of the night before had left them unprepared. Maybe they could have gone back to the cave and hunkered down, if they’d thought about it. Enough nutrient paste and they would have been fine for a while. Better than fine, they would have been _together_.

In retrospect, she’d been embarrassingly docile when they put the cuffs on her, but Alex was already being loaded into the transport and she wasn’t going to let Alex go off to face whatever this was alone. Alex _had_ fought, she remembered. Alex had struggled, straining against her cuffs to keep Kara in her sight. She’d promised that it would be okay, and cursed and snarled threats that centered around the main theme of _leave her alone_ and _don’t touch her_ and _she didn’t do anything_. Alone together in the back of the transport, Alex had leaned into her, forehead to forehead. “Don’t say anything,” she’d said, her voice low. “Let me take all the blame. I need to know you’re safe. We’ll figure out the rest from there.”

But, what passed for planetary law enforcement on Teklok hadn’t been especially interested in cooperating with Alex’s plans. There was no trial, no jury. The officials had a sworn statement in hand that the both of them had been the cause of property damage and personal injury, and there really wasn’t a defense to mount. The company monitored all activity under the dome, vigilant against anyone who might try to steal, smuggle, or otherwise detract from their hullum profits. There was high-res video of Kara helping Alex limp her way away from the junkyard and straight to their little house, available for a modest fee to any party who wanted to back up an accusation of wrongdoing.

The question wasn’t of guilt. The question was of recompense. Time to be served was set by the cost of the fines and restitution owed to the aggrieved party. Alex, with her face bruised and battered from the fight, drew the worst of the punishment. Fines for damage to persons, fines for damage to property, and a pronouncement of restitution by hard labor were listed off in an almost bored, off-hand tone by the company official calculating her lien. Kara had watched her be taken away, mind reeling, unable to find her footing as the lives they’d managed to build after the crash were deconstructed with efficient bureaucratic indifference. She’d heard Alex’s promises as if they were coming from far away, wrapped in a thick cotton layer of shock, and she’d done nothing. By all objective measures, she’d _failed_ Alex.

Now it’d been close to three Earth standard months, and Kara couldn’t remember if she’d even told Alex she loved her before they took her away.

If they’d had more than a paltry amount of credits, maybe they could have bought their way out of it. Kara had tried. She’d thrown all of their credits at Alex’s lien, but all of the credits they’d scrimped and scraped to earn were little more than a chip in the solid stone face of a mountain when it came to the amount Alex owed. Once the credits were gone, there was nothing else Kara could do. She’d been given her own lien and locked away to labor until it was gone. Instead of searching for Alex, she spent her time with hands sore from picking away residual hullum fibers from plants that had already been stripped and processed, selling her meagre day’s labors to the company for the few credits they could net.

It was almost ironic. There were people on Earth who would have given anything to lock Kara away, and all it had taken was a round of embarrassingly ineffective fisticuffs and a little breaking and entering.

On the day Alex had been taken away, it hadn’t occurred to her until it happened that they would be separated. When she’d been assigned her bunk in the large, open dormitory that served as her cell, she’d expected to find Alex beside her, unrolling the thin, bare mattress they’d been assigned. One of the other debtors had laughed at her when they’d found out why Kara jolted every time the door was opened, hopeful eyes pinned on whoever came through it. _They go for hard labor and they don’t come back_ , the alien had said. _You can’t earn your way out of a hole that digs itself deeper every day. It’s too bad about your girl._

It took weeks for Kara to understand what that meant, until the cost of her bunk and the thin, unsatisfying nutrient paste she was given twice a day appeared as a debit on her account, biting into what little progress she’d made. With nothing else to do, locked away and under the eye of uncaring guards bearing stun weapons, Kara picked at dry, stripped hullum stalks until her fingers bled. The sooner she paid off her lien, the sooner she could start to work on Alex’s.

When one of the facility’s functionaries had come to pull her out of her bunk to tell her that her lien was repaid in full, she’d felt vindicated. She was free and soon Alex would be as well, because she’d live on the streets and pick bare a thousand hullum stalks a day for the credits. Anything to pay off Alex’s lien and to have her back. The high of it lasted for all of half an hour, when her brain finally forced her to accept that nothing she had done had brought about her release. It couldn’t have, when she’d calculated at least 18 Earth standard months before she’d manage to pay off her lien, no matter how many hullum stalks she scavenged a day. Instead, she found her mother waiting for her on the other side of the gates, looking so out of place against the drab gray street that Kara wondered if she was imagining things.

In a different world, one in which Alex wasn't on her own and vulnerable, Kara would have sunk into the comfort of having her mother with her again. She still hadn't really gotten used to having her back in her life, despite the days she'd spent on Argo trying to bargain for Harun-El and despite the messages they'd managed to send between them when Kara had returned to Earth. But this wasn't another world, and Alex wasn't with her, there to meet Alura alongside Kara. Instead of a hug from her mother, she wrapped her arms around herself, full of a sense of gnawing desperation.

“Slow down,” her mother had said, breaking into Kara’s panicked babbling, as they’d stood outside of the prison facility. Kara had tried, had tried to catch her breath and lay out the problem in an orderly fashion, but it’d been hopeless. If she was free, it’d meant she could finally search for Alex. She could _save_ Alex. It wasn’t a time for pleasantries and reunions. It was a time for action.

Action and _credits_.

Action, it turned out, didn’t look very much like action at all. At the behest of her mother, she’d finally changed out of the ragged clothes that she’d been wearing when she’d been taken into custody. They were the same clothes she’d worn on alternating days for their time on Teklok, and part of her wanted to keep wearing them. They were a reminder of Alex, who would finger the hole that had developed in Kara’s shirt and roll her eyes and joke that neither of them had any kind of practical skills or else they’d know how to fix it. Her mother had brought a veritable wardrobe with her, and as Kara’s fingers had drifted across the soft cloth, she’d been sure she’d leave dirty fingerprints behind. There were dresses and tunics and pants, and before she selected something for herself, Kara realized she’d already picked out an outfit for Alex. The tunic and pants would probably be too big for Alex in her malnourished state, but she’d look good in them regardless. She’d look good in anything with Kara’s crest on it, marking her as a member of the House of El.

The dress Kara had finally chosen for herself felt stifling and heavy, though maybe, she acknowledged, the true yoke was the weight of her forced inaction. She wasn’t Supergirl on Teklok. She wasn’t going to crash through the walls of a prison and scoop Alex into her arms. She wasn’t going to fly them to safety, and return to take down the whole corrupt organization. All she could do was wait while her mother negotiated Alex’s release and talked to officials and worked her way through the apparently tedious process of converting Kryptonian currency into the credits used planet-side. She was glad for her mother’s skillset, and the way it’d been honed during what Kara imagined to be endless council meetings back on Argo. She just didn’t share it or her mother’s patience.

Maybe she’d been around Alex for too long, but the impulse to punch her way through the situation grew more and more appealing as time limped along.

The day her mother had told her that Alex’s release had been arranged, she’d clung to her, weak with relief. She’d cried against her mother’s shoulder in a way she hadn’t since she’d been a small child, when skinned knees and bruised elbows were allowable reasons for sniffles. It was appallingly un-Kryptonian, at least given what she remembered of Krypton, but her mother had hugged her back just as tightly and murmured words of comfort until Kara exhausted herself.

“I look forward to meeting the one who holds your heart,” Alura had said, smiling when Kara blushed and ducked her head.

Still, even with everything worked out, and Alex’s arrival imminent, Kara couldn’t relax. She needed to put her hands on Alex, to trace every bone and explore every inch of her, to make sure she was alright. She needed to dress her in the clothes her mother had brought, protected by her crest, and watch as Alex finally ate a real meal. She needed them to be out of Teklok’s airspace and on their way to Argo, where she’d watch Alex grow healthy again and where she’d finally get to show her this remnant of Krypton. The idea of sharing Argo with Alex, this part of her she’d thought she’d lost forever, had taken on a life of its own as she’d been forced to wait through her mother’s seemingly endless negotiations. As the days passed, she’d found herself indulging in romantic flights of fancy more and more often. She’d pictured evenings spent dining with Alex on the balcony of her room at her mother’s house and of feeding Alex all of the favorite foods she remembered from childhood. She’d planned the route of long walks through the city, where she’d point out details of the architecture and introduce Alex to everyone they passed along the way. There’d be no pressure, no gnawing hunger, no fears about the future, and when the time was right, when she’d proven her worth and cemented her case, she’d ask Alex to bond with her.

“Kara.” Her mother’s hand settled on her shoulder. “I know you’re worried, but they said she was fine.”

Kara didn’t budge. She kept her eyes trained on the transport dock, waiting for the ship bearing Alex to land. As grateful as she was that her mother had come for her, for them, she couldn’t relax. Not until Alex was close enough to touch, and not until she could verify for herself that Alex was safe and whole. She wasn’t inclined to trust the word of whoever _they_ were. She’d done her time with relative ease by doing what she always did – she made friends, she blended in, and she tried to stay off the radar. But Alex? Those weren’t her strengths, and Alex hadn’t exactly been in the best of shape when she was taken. Kara didn’t trust anyone on this profit-obsessed planet to treat Alex with the care she needed, and if they did, they’d probably add it to her bill.

She wanted to lean into her mother’s hand, and take comfort in the warm, motherly tone of her voice. Kara knew her mother wanted more. She knew her mother wanted to fuss over her and coddle her and try to counterbalance decades of wrongs, real or imagined. Kara wanted that too, the closeness and the comfort of her mother, but she couldn’t do anything about the tight band of worry that made it hard to breathe. The only thing that would soothe it was Alex.

“Is that it?” Kara asked, muscles so taut she was nearly shaking. Her attention was locked on a squat craft that had emerged from the near white-out conditions outside the dome. They hadn’t seen any other craft arrive at the dock for hours. The ones that had landed had disgorged crates of varying shapes and size, but no Alex, and Kara had felt the band grow incrementally tighter with each disappointment.

“They’ll let us know as soon as she arrives,” her mother said softly, gentle and indulgent. “Why don’t you eat something, Kara? Rao knows you need it.”

“But what if this is it? What if she’s here?” Before her mother could say anything else, Kara was down the ship’s corridor and through the rear hatch, winding her way through the port until she was at the gate marking the end of public access.

The wait was agonizing. A slow approach followed by a slow landing, air hissing as brakes deployed. The whine of the loading dock being lowered, the flurry of activity as the cargo space was relieved of countless storage containers, and then, finally, a too-thin figure with reddish-brown hair being led down the ramp, hands cuffed in front of her. Kara tried to catch Alex’s attention, but distance defeated her attempts. She slammed a hand into the gate as Alex was led into one of the compact, utilitarian buildings, and even though she knew what was happening – had gone through it herself – the band around her chest got a little tighter. Inside, Alex would be signing forms and being informed of the minutia of her release. They’d take the cuffs off and give her back the clothes she’d been wearing when she was taken, and, assuming everything was going according to plan, she’d walk through the door free from her lien and the labor she’d been assigned to clear it. Would, but hadn’t yet, and until she had her in her arms again, Kara couldn’t bring herself to trust that it would happen.

Kara’s hands were aching by the time she heard the snick of a door opening. She hadn’t even realized she’d had them wrapped around the bars of the gate until she’d pulled them free and found them stiff and cold. And then Alex was there, finally, walking toward her. Her hair was longer and there was a cast on her arm – the one Kara had managed to break not once but twice. She was all angles and paler than Kara would have liked, but she had a half-smile on her face that stretched into a full one once she saw Kara waiting for her. It was one of Kara’s favorite Alex smiles, the kind that spread upwards to a little crinkle of her nose and eyes and bared so many teeth that some non-Earth cultures might have considered it a threat.

When Alex stepped through the gate, Kara nearly knocked her right back through it. She buried her head in Alex’s shoulder and hugged her tightly, palms flat on Alex’s back to touch as much of her as possible. Alex laughed even as she returned the hug, a soft, happy sound that trailed off into a sigh of relief as Alex rested her head against Kara’s shoulder.

“Hey, you,” Alex said against the fabric of Kara’s dress, the words more rumble than sound.

Kara pulled back, eyes searching Alex’s face. The cut over her eyebrow had healed, leaving a thin, pink scar. She looked healthy, if painfully thin, and happy, if the way her eyes were soft and warm was any indication. “I love you,” Kara said, because the words had been lodged in her chest since the day Alex had been taken from her. She didn’t want to go another second without saying them, because if their time on Teklok had taught her anything, it was that nothing could be trusted to last – this moment of peace included.

Alex’s smile went crooked and pleased. “I love you, too.”

And then, because she couldn’t wait any longer, Kara put her hands on Alex’s cheeks and kissed her. She kissed her with the force of months of pent up longing, heartbreak, and worry, not caring who might see. After a squeak of surprise, Alex kissed back with a dedicated fervor that soothed the part of Kara that had worried that time apart might change something between them, might dull the sharp edge of their love, or give Alex time to think of the reasons why she shouldn’t let herself have it.

When Alex finally pulled away, there was a blush high on her cheeks, as if she’d just remembered they weren’t alone. “Is that your mom?” she asked, staring over Kara’s shoulder, looking overwhelmed and shocked and a little embarrassed. She also looked adorable, with kiss swollen lips and her hair mussed from Kara’s fingers, so Kara kissed her again, soft and reassuring this time. After, she ignored the way Alex’s glances over her shoulder grew increasingly worried, because it was much more important to map Alex’s fine, high cheekbones, the delicate length of her neck, and the sharp cut of her collarbone.

“What happened?” she asked, cradling Alex’s broken arm in her hands.

“A support beam,” Alex answered distractedly, swaying into Kara. “So it worked? Your mom got the message?”

“She did.” Kara kissed Alex’s cheek, her chin, the bridge of her nose.

Alex allowed it, then caught Kara’s face in her hand, holding her still. “And you’ve been okay? I tried to ask about you, but they wouldn’t tell me anything. I’ve been so worried.”

“I missed you.”

Alex’s cheeks colored. “I missed you too,” she said, a little hushed, like she was embarrassed she hadn’t said it sooner. She took a step back, and seemed to register the clothes Kara was wearing for the first time. “Look at you,” she said, reaching out to trail her fingers over the crest of the House of El imprinted into the fabric of Kara’s dress.

Kara caught her fingers and kissed them. “You’re going to look good wearing my crest,” she said, thinking about the clothes she’d picked out for Alex from the selection her mother had brought. “We’ll have you fitted for your own robes when we get to Argo.”

Alex looked as if the prospect delighted her, the idea of having robes of her own. It was almost too much, seeing Alex again, seeing her happy without the weight of their uncertain future on her shoulders. With a stumbling step forward, Kara wrapped her up in a too-tight hug. “I want you to be my bondmate, Alex,” she said. Suddenly shy, she pressed her face into Alex’s hair. “I had a plan for this. It was romantic, I swear.”

She had worried that Alex would hesitate or list out for her all the reasons why they shouldn’t, because Alex had a tendency to gird herself against the worst possible outcome instead of letting herself consider that the world might surprise her for once. Instead, Alex hugged her back just as tightly, pressed a kiss against her ear, and said softly, “I want that too. You don’t need romance to convince me. I don’t ever want anything to take you away from me again.”

For a moment, Kara felt like she couldn’t breathe. She wondered if maybe she’d lost herself to a daydream, but then Alex was kissing her again and the band around her chest cracked open. She suspected she was crying, but couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it.

This time, when they parted, Alex looked both cocky and a little shy. She reached out with a sure hand to brush away the tear Kara could feel tracing a tickling path down her cheek, and tilted her head to the side. “So,” she asked, tucking a lock of Kara’s hair behind her ear, “are you going to introduce me to your Mom?”

Kara nodded, so full of love she ached with it.

“And then what do you say we get out of here?”

“Come on,” Kara laughed, pulling Alex along by her uninjured hand. Pulling her toward home, toward safety. “I have so much to show you.”

**Author's Note:**

> @Val, I tried to work in various things from your ask. They may be more or less visible, but here's a round-up: bathing/washing as foreplay; comfort sex; hurt/comfort sex; action & adventure; battle couple; injuries; praise kink; desperate end-of-the-world sex; PDA; Character A stitching up Character B; and the barest pinch of One carrying the other - While both of them are injured/sick
> 
> I hope you enjoy.


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